


second skin

by Haberdasher



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Related, Character Study, Eventual Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gen, Minor Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Ocean, POV Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Past Georgie Barker/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Selkie Jonathan Sims, Selkies, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27809797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: the tale of jonathan sims, selkie.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 150





	second skin

jonathan sims’ first memories are of living by the sea that he loved with a woman who feared it.

he longed to spend every second he could in the water. jon would race home after school every day and grab his skin and race back off to the beach, not listening to his grandmother’s shouts for him to stop. the water was always cool and sweet and _right_ as it pressed against his skin.

he couldn’t understand, at the time, why she was always so worried about him.

threats didn’t stop him. the police having to intervene in his journeys towards the beach didn’t stop him. the water was his home as much as the air, and he didn’t care what he had to do to reach it, or who didn’t care for his actions along the way.

what finally stopped him from making those frequent treks to the beach was when his grandmother took his skin when he was at school and hid it away, saying that she would only give it back to him when she felt he was responsible enough to handle it.

the two never spoke of the matter again.

.

going to oxford for uni was... an experience. jon had never spent so much time inland before, had never lived somewhere that didn’t smell strongly of sea salt. it was disorientating, even more than going from bournemouth to oxford normally would be, and jon flailed a little at first--not in his classes, which he always aced, but in everything else.

and then he found his path, found his people, even found a girlfriend for some time. he started his studies of the paranormal and supernatural in earnest, though he never dared tell anyone why he was so interested in the topic.

(one night georgie happened to be writing a paper on selkie lore while jon was there, and somehow things devolved into her grabbing a fur coat from her closet and making jokes about jon stealing “her coat” from her.

jon bit his tongue until it bled to stop himself from shooting back that _she_ wasn’t the one who had to worry about such things.)

.

jon’s grandmother passed away not long after his graduation from uni when he was living in london, still struggling to find his place in the world.

he’d almost forgotten that she had his skin until he stumbled upon it again.

it wasn’t anywhere too special, wasn’t locked up tightly. it was just in a dusty cardboard box underneath her bed, one of many.

jon almost didn’t recognize it at first. he thought it’d be smaller. it had been smaller when he’d lost it, after all. it must have kept growing as he did.

(some small distant part of jon’s brain wondered about the mechanics of a skin growing while unattached to the person it belonged to, the science behind it all, but it wasn’t as if he could go back in time and do experiments to prove any hypothesis he might develop.)

but he knew it by sight, and though it’d been over a decade since he’d last worn it now putting it on was like a reflex, a motion as practiced as if he’d done it daily all his life.

only after he put it on did jon remember why his grandmother had hidden it from him in the first place, realize the implications of it still being tucked away in this dusty old box.

maybe she didn’t understand. she wasn’t born to the water like he was, after all. she didn’t know what it was like, didn’t know how much of a part of him it was.

or maybe she understood well enough, and to her dying day, she still didn’t want him to have his own skin. maybe she didn’t believe that jon had matured enough to handle the responsibility of it, even after all this time.

he’d never get to ask her about it.

the skin was soft and warm, but as jon sat there in that gloomy old house, he still felt chilled to the bone.

.

when jon joined the magnus institute as a researcher, the first thing he was assigned to look into involved the history of the selkie-hunting field, especially as it related to a recent case involving two especially bold and bloody selkie hunters.

jon had avoided looking into the topic too closely before then. he knew his heritage came with risks as well as rewards, he wasn’t _that_ naive, but he’d never wanted to face those risks head-on, never wanted to look into the details, had worried that doing so might well be enough to attract unwanted attention.

but it was his job now to read case after case about selkies being abused, being killed, being sold as slaves or spouses or _pets_... and the people who said that their pain didn’t count, didn’t matter, because after all, it’s not like they were _human_...

after the first day of this research, jon went out and bought a large safe, stuffed his skin inside of it, locked it up, and vowed never to mention the matter to anybody again unless absolutely necessary.

(it wasn’t until long after that first research session that jon first suspected that elias hadn’t assigned him that particular case by mere coincidence.)

.

jon knew the supernatural existed, of course. hell, jon _was_ supernatural himself, despite all outward appearances to the contrary.

that didn’t make the sinking feeling that he was being watched every time he read a statement in his new position as head archivist any easier to stomach.

just because he knew some magic didn’t mean he knew _this_ magic. he didn’t know what it was, didn’t know what it meant, and he didn’t like it, didn’t trust it.

it felt like the safest thing was to deny it all, play the skeptic. nobody’d suspect his own supernatural secret if he refused to admit that the supernatural was real, after all, right?

(for better or for worse, prentiss at least didn’t seem to discriminate...)

.

learning that gertrude had been murdered brought back memories of those early research sessions for the institute, except that jon knew this time there was a _different_ motivation behind someone wanting to kill him. presumably, anyway.

it was kind of sad that jon could think of at least two different reasons someone might want to kill him now. he hadn’t even _done_ anything to warrant what felt like a certain and looming execution. he was at risk simply because he _existed_.

jon investigated his coworkers’ secrets over the months that followed, but didn’t dare trust any of them with his own.

one target on his back was enough already.

(as jon found out the details of the true threat to his existence, as he hid in the tunnels under the institute from the thing that was not sasha, he wondered if, when it replaced him--and it seemed inevitable, at this point, seemed like a “when” rather than an “if”--if it would know the secret he’d hidden so well, or if his imposter would appear perfectly, blandly human, with nothing of value left hidden away in that safe in his flat.)

.

jon didn’t have much time to grab his things before heading to georgie’s, but he still made sure to bring his skin with him. he couldn’t risk someone else getting a hold of it or risk the safe being thrown away when he went on the run, ending up in a landfill far away with none aware of the precious cargo still hidden within.

naturally, when jon arrived at georgie’s door, halfway into a breakdown and carrying what appeared to be a thick fur coat in his arms, one of the first things she said to him was an offer to take his skin off his hands and put it away for him.

jon wasn’t sure of the exact expression he made upon hearing that offer, but based on the look on georgie’s face, it must have been quite the sight.

he stammered his way through his refusal, saying that it was a family heirloom, precious and fragile, and it wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, obviously he _did_ , but he still preferred to handle it himself... and none of it was a lie, exactly--and perhaps that was what led georgie to back down, as she knew his tells well enough, knew that he wasn’t lying to her face--but he certainly wasn’t divulging the full truth, either.

jon caught georgie looking curiously at the skin a few times, but she never voiced the many questions she must have had about it, never said a word about it after that first night, and for that jon was certainly grateful.

.

the worst part about being kidnapped by the circus-

no, that wasn’t right. there were a lot of horrible parts about being kidnapped by the circus, and jon wasn’t sure which, if any, could truly take the title of “worst.” there were plenty of contenders for the title.

but _one_ of the terrible parts about being kidnapped by the circus, at any rate, was that of all the places they could have taken him, they’d chosen to keep him by the sea.

he could smell the sea salt in the air, could feel the cool ocean breeze against his face. he was so close to the sea, the closest he’d been in years now... while bound to a chair, unable to approach the water he could sense was just a few short blocks away from him.

he could feel the sea calling to him, but he couldn’t answer its call, no matter how much he wanted to do so.

(jon wondered what the living mannequins that tended to him would do if, when they were in the middle of so painstakingly moisturizing his skin for nikola’s future use, he pointed out that that wasn’t even his _real_ skin they were working on, that his true skin was safely locked up some distance away.

jon decided against finding out the hard way.)

.

jon told the archives staff, after he... got back, that he’d been held somewhere close to the sea.

martin asked how he could be so sure, and jon sputtered a bit before saying that he could smell the sea from where he’d been held.

it wasn’t a lie.

but apparently when most of them returned to the wax museum, ready to put a stop to the unknowing one way or another, none of the rest of them could smell it from that distance, even though the sea was right there, _right there_ , how could they not-

none of them pressed the issue. they had enough to worry about already.

.

when jon returned to the institute, after waking up from his coma (after _escaping death_ ), he had assumed that his skin was long gone at this point, that his fears about leaving it in his place to be discarded or picked over by others had been assumed after all, that he would never see it again.

and then, in an unassuming plastic bag containing an assortment of his things that was all he had left to his name now, he found it, buried under an old band shirt and a few sets of underwear.

he knew what it was at a glance, of course, and he had to suppress his reflexive gasp, had to suppress his initial instinct to throw it on immediately. melanie and basira already thought he was a monster; jon had no interest in turning into a seal within sight of them and proving them both right.

but jon pressed his hands into the thick, soft fur, and for the briefest of moments, despite everything, the world felt right again.

.

jon wondered, briefly, if he really needed to remove a part of his body to serve as an anchor, if he really needed the boneturner’s assistance on the matter.

after all, his skin was already separate, already removed, already waiting for him in the archives.

but was that enough? he’d gone over a decade without it before, after all, and it hadn’t magically called him back or anything like that. he’d only stumbled onto it again by mere happenstance.

no, better to be sure, better to leave behind something that was always meant to be attached to him...

his rib would do the trick quite nicely.

.

when jon heard that there was a way to quit the institute, a way to leave behind the beholding, he grabbed his skin and brought it with him as he rushed to discuss the matter with martin.

they could leave, they could be free, they could be _together;_ blindness was a small price to pay for that, wasn’t it? all martin needed to do was take his hand, take his _skin_... take it, martin, _take it_ -

martin refused to take jon’s skin from him.

as jon cried afterwards, his tears tasted a bit like sea water.

.

the lonely was a poor imitation of a beach, really.

maybe if things had been different jon wouldn’t have noticed, but he knew beaches, knew the _sea_ , and it didn’t make his eyes sting like this, wasn’t this quiet and empty and desolate.

it still called to him a little, but the call was not that of the ocean, but that of another part of himself, the part that didn’t dare connect with people, didn’t dare share the truth of his life with them.

jon ignored the call. he had a greater duty here.

besides, seeing martin’s face light up was more beautiful than the sea could ever be.

.

daisy’s safehouse was only a few short miles from the sea, though martin swore he couldn’t smell it, wouldn’t know how close it was if he hadn’t seen it on the drive there.

jon had his skin with him, of course, and part of him longed to retreat into the sea. the magic of the ocean was different than that which surrounded him now, and perhaps if he threw on his skin and launched himself into the depths, the beholding wouldn’t be able to reach him.

but then, martin wouldn’t be able to reach him, either.

martin was still human. jon was a monster in more ways than one these days, but martin was still human, and if jon went into the sea, martin couldn’t follow.

so he contented himself with seaside outings, dashing into the sea with his skin on like he was a child again, but this time the human onlooker by his side would laugh and join right in. martin loved him in both forms, and he loved martin, and that mattered more than giving in to the ocean’s call any day.

.

at least when the world got turned upside down, nobody cared what form jon took anymore. nobody cared if he was man or seal or both or something else entirely. nobody cared what kind of monster he was now.

the world had bigger problems to deal with these days.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


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